Promise to Remember
by detcutthroat
Summary: Set just before the end of "Going Home," Regina and Emma take Henry home to pack his things before he and Emma have to leave for good. Emma won't spend her last moments in Storybrooke cooped up inside, so she takes Regina for a walk to the docks. Regina doesn't want to be forgotten; Emma doesn't want to forget. Even if it's not real, they want to promise to remember. One shot.


It wasn't fair.

This woman, this Emma Swan, came into Storybrooke like a tornado, and when the storm finally began to calm and Regina caught a glimpse of bright skies, she was going to lose the color in her world yet again.

If Emma had never left Boston and brought Henry back to this godforsaken town, this would never have happened. Regina and her son and her curse could have lived here, "happily" ever after. She never would have had to dig up the old rage she'd pushed down. She never would have had to lose her son. It was exactly what she predicted that irreverent woman would cause.

 _I've known you for some time and all I wanted was for you to get the hell out of my life so I can be with my son._

But Emma also sparked emotions in Regina that she thought she lost the capability to feel: excitement, joy, and...some other third thing, maybe.

And Emma didn't want to go.

 _But really...what I want is for Henry to be happy. We have no choice. You have to go._

Regina knew it sure as hell wasn't her choice, but nothing in her life ever has been.

"You've got one hour to fit as much as you can into the bug, kid. Any questions?"

The direction jolted Regina from her idle reverie.

"Yeah, I got it," Henry replied softly as he climbed the stairs slowly, a far cry from his normal pace of skipping up the steps. Emma nodded mournfully.

Regina turned her head to look at her son's birth mother, soon to be her son's only mother. Oh god, that was painful to think. She noticed the defeated expression on Emma's face and tried to be gentle, despite her urges to lash out.

"Miss Swan, you may feel free to make yourself comfortable in the living room until Henry's packed, I can get you a drink..." Regina started.

"Regina, I appreciate the formalities and I'm sure you're a great party hostess, but it's really unnecessary at this point. You might as well start off resenting me again while I get ready to take your son away," Emma grumbled.

Regina sighed with annoyance that she'd exhibited such self-control just for that. "Do you really think that's what's on my mind right now?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't it be? I would resent me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to call you spiteful here. I've done that enough times. I'm just saying that I'd be damn mad if this kind of thing kept happening to me and I'd blame whoever was convenient. I get it." Emma stared at a spot on the floor, leaning against the staircase with one arm and tapping the other on her leg.

"I've considered that approach. When I realized that I'd have to leave Henry behind, I almost thought that I'd rather leave him alone then send him with you because you're right, the thought of losing him to you was abhorrent. But I meant what I said. I want him to be happy. So any guilt you're feeling right now is yours alone, not mine," Regina said.

Emma nodded, then snorted. "Maybe the silver lining is that you finally get to be rid of me," she chuckled.

Regina swallowed. "That's not as satisfying as I once thought it would be, I'm afraid."

Emma raised an eyebrow. "Really? So now you're only going to throw a quaint dinner party about it instead of a giant ball or whatever?"

"Swan, you are positively tactless and have a tendency for disrespect and poor fashion choices, but you're far from being some of the names I used to call you, and far from being your idiot parents."

"You'd better get used to my idiot parents again, your majesty, you're gonna be dealing with them a lot pretty soon," Emma laughed, then sighed. "I don't want to sit on a couch my last hour in this town. I think I'm gonna head for the docks and look at the water." Emma started for the door, then turned back. "You want to join?

Regina gave her a strange look, but then shrugged. "I could use some exercise," she said.

"Yeah, you look real out of shape," Emma replied dryly, earning a glare from Regina, but they started off for the docks.

* * *

"Well, we're here. Now what?" Regina was uncharacteristically impatient. The two sat on a wooden bench facing the water.

"I'm about to leave this dumb town forever, can I just have a few minutes to take it in?" Emma responded, exasperated.

"You might have forgotten that the rest of us are leaving too, Swan. And I created this 'dumb town', so watch it," Regina sniped.

Unexpectedly, instead of taking the bait, Emma simply apologized.

Regina sighed, caught off guard. She decided to repay Emma's courtesy with some of her own. "Honestly, nothing good in my life ever lasted, so it would have been foolish of me to ever expect this would." Emma turned to look at her. "I thought I'd lost it when you came around, but I didn't lose anything but a curse. And since then, I've felt things I numbed out for years. And that's at least in part your doing, so I guess I owe thanks to you. I just thought...maybe you would like to know that."

Emma turned her face back to the water. "I do. But I wish I didn't. I guess I'm more naïve than you because I was just starting to think maybe this would last. I mean, I know I get to keep Henry, but I got spoiled with so much more than just him. And now he's going to lose his family. He won't know it but he's always going to be missing his grandparents and his mother. I won't know it but I'll be missing my parents and...well, you."

"You two are not going to miss me. Parents and grandparents are part of most people's lives. 'Son's other mother' generally Isn't," Regina quipped, deadpan.

"Trust me, Regina, if there's anyone's absence we'll feel, it's yours," Emma laughed. "You have a kind of, um, forceful personality."

"I choose to take that as a compliment."

"Good, it was one."

Regina chuckled. "I won't be losing any memories and I'm going to miss Henry to such a degree that I don't know how I'm going to stand it. But at least I know that you're going to take care of each other. Since I met you I began to recognize more of you in his personality and his actions alike. You'll be dysfunctional as hell but you'll manage."

Emma rolled her eyes. "I'll have to see it before I believe that I can possibly forget you."

"I don't want you to forget me," Regina admitted quietly.

"Hmm?"

"I don't want any of this. I don't want my son to lose me as his mother. I don't want to go back to the Enchanted Forest. But I knew I wouldn't. I didn't expect it to be so important to me that I didn't want you to forget me, Emma."

Emma crinkled her brow and thought for a moment. She looked up.

"Promise you can keep a secret, Regina?"

Regina gave a questioning look, but nodded.

"I don't want to forget, either," Emma whispered. She placed her hand on Regina's shoulder and gazed at her eyes, then her lips. She moved her hand to Regina's face and with a deep breath, pulled it closer and kissed her.

Regina gasped but didn't pull away. No, she wrapped her arms around Emma's shoulders and she deepened it. She needed to feel something besides pain and here was Emma Swan, offering a way out. The woman was useful now. Something about how doomed this was, how limited the lifespan of this little tryst could be was comforting, and coaxed Regina to go all in. Emma probably intended to make sure Regina wouldn't forget her, but she hoped, no matter how silly it might have been, that somehow this intimate contact would enable her memory to remain etched in Emma's brain in a form of magic more powerful than even her own curses. No one ever had to know what happened here, but they could know and it could keep them connected.

The two didn't break contact for several minutes, and it was only the ping of a text on Emma's phone from Henry that penetrated through the moment. Emma quickly typed in an assurance that they were coming back, then stuffed the phone back into her pocket.

Regina gazed at her, taking in her messy blonde hair, flushed cheeks, and pink, bitten lips, and felt self-conscious about what she must have looked like.

"I uh, I know that was bold and uncalled for, and I probably should have asked for permission, but I just, I had to do it while there was still time," Emma explained sheepishly.

"I know, Emma," Regina replied. "I know. I'm glad you did it." Emma smiled gratefully. "Come on, let's get back to Henry."

Emma nodded and stood to go. Regina took her time but rose while grabbing back onto Emma's shoulder with a gloved hand.

"Emma...Say you'll remember me."

"Regina, you know I won't, that's your curse."

"Don't you think I know that, Swan?" Regina remarked tearfully. "But just say it. It'll give us both hope. Yes, I said that disgusting word. But I need some damn hope."

"Okay, okay. I will remember you, Regina," Emma assured. "I will."

* * *

Emma peered into her son's room, pleased to see him sprawled out across his bed and hear him snoring softly. She quietly closed the door again, and gently strolled back to her own bedroom. She crawled into her queen sized bed, next to her boyfriend, warm, grinning, and half dazed with sleep.

She quickly succumbed to her own sleep as he grazed his arm up and down her arm. In her dreams, as she felt warm hands on her shoulders, she looked into the dark brown eyes of a strange woman, lips swollen from kisses, the most beautiful woman she's never known, on a bench looking out onto the waters of some fairytale land.

And she smiled.


End file.
